2022 Tracker Targa V-19 Combo, Mercury 150, Texas repo to Lake Lanier, and the braid on the prop shaft

this is long. a few people at the Old Federal ramp asked about the boat and dana said write it up once here instead of telling it six times in a parking lot.

me, my wife jen, three kids, 11, 9 and 6. we had a 2008 Bayliner 175 for five years. fine for tubing, terrible for fishing, nowhere to put a rod that the 6 year old wasn't sitting on. this spring the plan was a fish and ski around 19 feet with a 150, something i could take after stripers at 6 am and still pull a tube at 2. short list was a Targa V-19 Combo, a Lund 1875 Crossover XS or a Crestliner Fish Hawk.

dealer prices up here were rough. a 2022 V-19 Combo with the 150 at a dealer in Cumming was 41,995 plus an 899 doc fee, 160 hours. anything 2023 was over 47.

a guy at work sent me mandaautollc.com in march. if you haven't run into them, they broker bank repos. the boats sit at whatever yard the lender uses, you bid sealed online and they truck it to you. there's no lot to walk around on.

first thing i did was lose one. a 2021 Lund 1875 Crossover XS at a yard in Missouri, i put in 33,000 and didn't get it. nobody shows you the winning number, so to this day i don't know if i missed by fifty bucks or five grand. that bugged me for a week.

the one i did get: 2022 Targa V-19 Combo, Merc 150 FourStroke, 186 hours in the gauge photo, Trailstar tandem trailer, sitting in Conroe, Texas. the m&a listing ran to about seventy pictures plus a cold start video on muffs. i bid 36,400 in the middle of april and had the email two days after it closed. wired the money, and the truck pulled up to my house 13 days later. Conroe to Gainesville is about 820 miles, so under the 1,000 and the delivery cost nothing.

paperwork tomorrow. Texas does something weird.

good boat. i ran a 2019 V-18 Combo with that same 150 for four years and sold it to my nephew last fall. two things on a three year old Targa that sat in a yard: the trolling motor batteries, i'd put money on them being junk if it sat a Texas winter with no charger on it. and the bilge pump float, mine stuck twice. both cheap.

186 hours on a 2022 is about right for a family boat. that's not a red flag.

hi, new, been reading since the forum opened. my dad and i are looking for something like this for Norris Lake. he's 68 and wants to fish, i want to be able to pull my nephews around.

about the paperwork part. when a boat comes from another state does the trailer have its own paper? i thought boat and trailer were one thing on one title. my dad says no and we've been arguing about it over dinner for a week. please settle it.

kat_wants_a_boat wrotewhen a boat comes from another state does the trailer have its own paper?

your dad wins, and in Texas it's not even two. Texas Parks and Wildlife titles the boat, and it also titles the outboard as its own separate thing. the trailer is a regular TxDMV title like a car. so my envelope had three titles, each one with the bank's signature and its lien release stamp, plus a bill of sale with the hull number, the motor serial and the trailer VIN on it. the m&a paperwork listed them as the broker and the bank as the seller.

Georgia doesn't title boats, it registers them through DNR. boat and motor titles went to DNR with the registration form, trailer title went to the Hall County tag office. sales tax got paid there. the registration fee was small, the tax was not.

the annoying part. the boat beat the title envelope by 9 days. it sat in my driveway with no numbers on it through a perfect weekend and i was not a happy man. emailed the m and a people, they said the bank mails titles on its own after the wire clears and sent a tracking number the next morning. fine, just slow.

jim, you'd have won that bet. both trolling batteries were dead and one wouldn't take a charge at all. 160 for a group 27 at Batteries Plus. bilge float works.

somebody's got to say it. 36,400 for a 2022 V-19 Combo is store money in Texas. Bass Pro in Grapevine had a 2022 V-19 Combo 150 at 37,995 in may with a dealer behind it, and there was a private one on boattrader in Lewisville at 34,500. you bid within a grand and a half of a showroom, on a boat you never touched, and it's a boat Tracker builds by the thousand. the cheap yard boat is supposed to be the whole point of buying blind.

fair hit. i went and looked at both, because my wife asked me the same thing in fewer words.

the Lewisville boat had 410 hours and a single axle trailer, which you didn't mention. the Grapevine one i believe, but Grapevine is 800 miles from my driveway. a transport outfit quoted me 1,950 to haul a 19 footer from DFW, or i burn two days and a tank and a half in the Silverado going to get it myself. the m&a auction had no buyer's premium on top, the 36,400 was the whole price, and the delivery was free.

so against Grapevine plus shipping i'm a couple grand ahead. against some perfect private boat in Georgia, maybe a grand behind. i spent two months looking for that perfect private boat in Georgia and never found it. i can live with that.

small update before the holiday. i dropped it at a marine shop in Flowery Branch on monday for a first service, since i had no records past what the listing showed. oil, filter, plugs, look it over. the tech called tuesday and asked if i'd been fishing braid. i haven't, i fish mono for stripers.

when he pulled the prop there was a wad of green braid wound so tight on the prop shaft behind the thrust washer he had to cut it off with a razor. and the gear lube came out light tan. not chocolate milk, not honey either. some striper guy in Texas lost a lure and i paid for it.

new prop shaft seal, pressure and vacuum test on the gearcase, fresh gear lube on top of the service, 265 more than i planned. he said the gears and bearings looked fine because it got caught early. picking it up friday, so we've got it for the 4th.

before anybody asks, no, i didn't try the warranty. it might have been covered under the six months, i honestly don't know. i wanted the boat for the holiday and the shop had it apart already, so i paid and moved on.

good shop. that's the most common thing i find on a used outboard in the summer and the owner almost never knows. line works its way past the thrust washer, cuts the prop shaft seal, water gets in the gear lube, and it makes no noise until the bearings go. by then you're pricing a lower unit.

for everybody reading: every few trips pull the prop, look behind it, and once a season crack the lower drain screw and catch the first ounce in a clear cup. honey colored, you're fine. coffee with creamer, get it looked at. i cut line off props every week here on Lake Hamilton, and a boat off an m&a lot or any other repo yard has usually sat a while with whatever was on them.

i've got the opposite question from everybody else. how does it ride loaded up on Lanier on a saturday afternoon? i'm stuck between a fish and ski and a plain bowrider, hence the name, and what scares me about the aluminum V hulls is the pounding when the cruisers are out. my wife gets seasick in a bathtub.

honestly, it's a 19 foot aluminum boat. near Lanier Islands on a saturday with the big cruisers throwing three footers it's wet up front, the kids love it and my wife moves to the back seat. trim down, slow to about 22, take the big ones at an angle and it's fine. drier than the old Bayliner, if that helps at all.

on the 4th we anchored in a cove off the south end with what felt like 40 other boats. six hours of tubing and swimming and the fuel flow said about 14 gallons. cruising at 30 the gauge says around 7 an hour. if your wife gets sick sitting at anchor more than running, a pontoon is the real answer and somebody here is going to yell at me for saying it.

two housekeeping notes on this one.

comps need hours and the trailer or they're just prices. wake_surf_kids, the Lewisville boat had 410 hours on it and we only know because the OP went and looked. put it in the first time.

and since three different people have emailed the mod box asking whether lake_lanier_dad works for m&a or gets paid to post this: no. i asked him for the wire confirmation and the bill of sale with the account numbers blacked out and he sent both the same afternoon. if anybody from the broker out of independence ever posts here, they'll say so in their signature or they'll be gone.

back here because this thread is the reason i'm doing any of this. i put my title questions in their own thread, two titles, one lot, and your three envelopes answer was the most useful thing anyone told me. dad says thanks too, grudgingly, since he was right.

one more. the 186 hours in the listing, did that match the gauge when it showed up? i've got a lot saved where the hour photo is blurry and i'm wondering whether to ask for a new one before i bid.

update, labor day weekend, and it's not the boat this time.

kat, 186 in the listing and 187 when it came off the truck, the driver said they ran it at the yard to load it. ask for the new photo. they sent me extra pictures in april when i asked.

this morning we left for Hartwell for the long weekend, campsite at Tugaloo. about ten miles past Commerce on I-85 the rear passenger tire on the trailer let go. the tread came off in one strip and took the fender with it. and here's the dumb part. i never once checked the trailer tires. 2021 date codes, plenty of tread, and they were sitting at 28 psi on a tire that says 50 on the sidewall. the boat sat in a Texas yard and then in my driveway, and i looked at the boat every single day and never at what it was riding on.

a tire shop in Lavonia had us rolling in about three hours, 140 for a tire mounted. fender's zip tied. four new ones get ordered tuesday.

241 hours on it now. warranty from M and A runs until october and i never used it, the prop seal was the only real repair and that was a stranger's braid. kids are asleep in the tent, jen is not speaking to the trailer.

if you're shopping, M&A Auto Sales had two fish and skis up this week when i looked. check the tires on whatever you buy, from anybody.

2022 Tracker Targa V-19 Combo, Mercury 150, Texas repo to Lake Lanier, and the braid on the prop shaft

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